Monday, July 22, 2013

Grocery Store Goodies (Veg Edition)

Hey guys,

So I went grocery shopping yesterday after we got back from our trip. As promised, I'm trying out a vegan diet with my husband this week. It's partly out of curiosity and partly out of a desire to save some money on our grocery bills. I mostly stuck to Trader Joe's like normal, but I also picked up a few specialty items at the health food store for our week of experimenting with vegan eating. Here's what I got:

Veggies:

A yellow onion, a sweet onion, a red onion, 4 on-the-vine tomatoes, a bag of butter lettuce, French green beans, Italian parsley, frozen spinach, 3 white potatoes, 2 russets, a zucchini, a yellow squash, and a cucumber I forgot to include. I already had celery, baby carrots, half a bell pepper, shallots, garlic, and a bag of carrots that will get used this week. I stuck with some things that I really like (the lettuce and the green beans) to have some familiarity during this week's veggie experiment.

Fruit:

Sorry about the picture quality here. I could NOT get the cameral to focus. I got a bag of granny smith apples to share with Hubby. Mine will be sliced with peanut butter for snacks. Also three lemons to juice for recipes, three bananas (I ate half of one this morning before the pic), organic strawberries, and calcium fortified orange juice. Still have 3/4 of a pint of organic blueberries in the fridge to add to oatmeal and dried cherries and dried mixed berries for snacks.

Protein:

One of two categories that I had to really look at for our dietary experiment this week. I normally eat a lot of chicken and fish. This week I'm sticking to beans, veggie burgers, and tofu. To last the week I picked up two cans of organic pinto beans, a can of organic Great Northern beans, baked teriyaki flavor tofu for wraps, silken tofu for a homemade salad dressing, hummus, and two different kinds of veggie burgers that are vegan: Morning Star Farms Barbeque Riblets and Gardenburger Black Bean and Chipotle burgers. I already had peanut butter in the fridge and a can each of chickpeas (garbanzo beans) and black beans in the pantry.

Dairy Swaps:

This is the category I'm the most nervous about this week. I think I could easily be a vegetarian, but I'm feeling a little panicky about foregoing dairy products, too. For the week, I got Earth Balance margarine, Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream, Silk Original Almond Milk, Almond Dream plain yogurt (for a recipe), unsweetened organic soy milk (for cooking), and Almond Dream Toffee Almond Fudge "ice cream" to have with fruit for desserts. I had a spoonful of the ice cream last night and it was pretty good, although it did seem a little more watery than dairy ice cream. I also opened the almond milk this morning and it made great oatmeal.

Carbs:

I still had half a loaf of multigrain bread in the fridge, so I got two things of Oat Revolution oatmeal (one in cinnamon spice and one in maple and brown sugar) since they were VERY on sale, whole grain tortillas (they have honey in them, so they're not really vegan, but I'm not going to worry about that this week), and vegan sprouted wheat sesame seed bagels for lunchtime sandwiches with hummus and veggies.

Miscellaneous (plus a few things I forgot in the other pictures):

Whole wheat linguine, vegan chocolate chip cookies (for my next cheat day), vital wheat gluten (for a veggie burger recipe), a can of diced tomatoes, raw cashews, tomato salsa, veggie broth in a carton, organic tahini (like peanut butter but made with sesame seeds), two Larabars for emergencies (the chocolate peanut butter one says that there could be traces of dairy in the chocolate chips, but again I'm not going to worry about that this week), an avocado, vegan "chicken" taquitos that I had for dinner last night (they were a little chewier than actual chicken, but very good), and a scoop of nutritional yeast from the bulk bins at the health food store. Both the nutritional yeast and raw cashews are going to go into cheese replacements for dinners this week.

The nutritional yeast cost next to nothing but the cashews were kind of expensive. So was the nondairy ice cream, but I'm not a big ice cream person, so it will last me a long time. I spent about what I normally spend on groceries, which was kind of disappointing, but I also bought a lot of things that will get used in small amounts over a long period of time (vital wheat gluten, tahini, nutritional yeast, raw cashews, margarine, sour "cream"), so I think that if we continue on with our veggie experiment that next week's groceries would cost a lot less.